SAPPHIC, SEDUCTIVE, DESTRUCTIVE: NIA DACOSTA'S 'HEDDA' IS DEVISHLY DIVINE

There have been countless adaptations of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler since audiences first met the “female Hamlet” in 1891. So it’s a credit to writer-director Nia DaCosta—helming her first non-studio film since her 2018 debut Little Woods—that this version feels entirely her own. Anchored by a terrific Tessa Thompson performance and brimming with sapphic, sensual energy, Hedda is a big, bold swing. And with me, it connects.

Ibsen’s play—about an independent, ruthless woman trapped in a marriage she never wanted — has always loomed large over modern theater. Every tragic heroine since has had a little Hedda in her. So the idea of reimagining such well-trodden material for the screen in 2025 sounds, frankly, like a fool’s errand. At least, that’s what I thought before Nia DaCosta proved otherwise.

But, don't worry. You don’t need to have read Ibsen to get swept up in Hedda. DaCosta’s film meets the only standard that matters for adaptation: it’s a fully realized cinematic experience that stands on its own. What she’s created isn’t a polite update; it’s an anxiety dream wrapped in champagne and smoke. DaCosta, who also adapted the screenplay, turns Ibsen’s domestic claustrophobia into a lush, feverish spectacle, part high-society psychodrama, part erotic nightmare.

What makes DaCosta’s adaptation so thrilling is that none of its changes feel decorative. Every flourish, every velvet dress, every sly wink, every whispered rumor about Hedda’s “darker-than-expected” complexion adds dimension to the story’s central idea: women forced into roles they were never meant to play. That tension feels sharper, and far more dangerous, when filtered through race and queerness. And it’s an absolute pleasure watching Thompson lean into Hedda’s chaos as a Black woman allowed to be decadent, manipulative, and gloriously unbothered.

*SPOILERS FOR 'HEDDA' FROM THIS POINT*

Play the Part and Stay Out of Trouble.

Nia DaCosta’s Hedda plays like a champagne-fueled fever dream—one that begins with a toast and ends with a crime scene. Adapted from Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler but unbound from its 19th-century corset, DaCosta’s version unfolds as a house party that turns into an exorcism of class, race, and desire.

The setup seems simple: newlyweds Hedda (Thompson) and George Tesman (played by Tom Bateman) have just moved into an ostentatious home they can’t afford, purchased with the “help” of Judge Roland Brack (played by Nicholas Pinnock). Hedda throws a lavish soirée to announce their return to society and it's a social debut that curdles almost immediately.

The guest list alone is a ticking bomb: her straight-laced husband’s academic peers mingle uneasily with her own bohemian friends, queer artists, and misbehaved intellectuals. The tension simmers until the arrival of two women from Hedda’s past — Eileen Lovborg (played by Nina Hoss), a once-disgraced scholar turned struggling-to-stay-sober icon, and Thea Clifton (played by Imogen Poots), Eileen's devoted writing partner and lover.

What follows is less a dinner party than it is descent into madness. Hedda alternates between puppet-master and saboteur, rekindling her old attraction to Eileen while toying cruelly with Thea. There’s an almost erotic pleasure in her destruction—there's spouses cheating, chandeliers crashing, Hedda serving drinks she knows will undo Eileen’s hard-won sobriety and a manuscript—Eileen and Thea’s life’s work—going up in flames. And later, Hedda literally hands over the gun that ends the night in catastrophe.

By the time the sun rises over the lake and Hedda, pockets full of stones, wades into the water, the film has shed all pretense of decorum. It’s baroque, blistering, and utterly unhinged. And, in DaCosta's hands, slightly ambiguous.

The Best Parties are Right After Something Terrible's Happened.

DaCosta writes with rhythm. What could have been a stiff modernization of Ibsen’s 19th-century text instead feels alive —sly, dangerous, and surprisingly funny. Every exchange hums with double meaning; every line lands like a veiled threat (or a flirtation).

What’s remarkable is how natural it all feels. DaCosta’s script reshapes Ibsen’s tragedy into something thornier and more modern—less about moral consequence than emotional hunger. It’s filled with contradictions: sharp wit beside aching vulnerability, erotic tension woven through existential dread. There are lines so brittle and biting they almost crack midair (“You think I’m cruel? I think I’m bored”), followed by exchanges that leave you momentarily winded by their honesty.

And beneath all the elegance and wit, there’s a steady, low thrum of violence—not just physical, but social, romantic, psychological. DaCosta understands that power isn’t shouted in this world; it’s whispered, smiled, and passed down like inheritance. Her writing captures that perfectly, transforming Ibsen’s grand tragedy into something sharper and far more dangerous.

And Tessa Thompson, as Hedda, thrives on that danger, manipulating her guests like chess pieces, and sinking further into the gilded trap she’s built for herself.

You're Quite the Duo.

When Tessa Thompson and Nia DaCosta first teamed up for Little Woods in 2018, they gave us something quietly radical: a story about two working-class sisters trying to survive the American healthcare system without losing their souls. It was intimate, grounded, and grimy—a world away from the opulent rot of Hedda. But that same undercurrent of desperation runs through both. In Little Woods, Thompson’s character clawed her way toward freedom; in Hedda, she’s suffocating inside it.

That shared DNA—DaCosta’s instinct for tension, Thompson’s ability to play restraint like a weapon—makes Hedda feel like the next evolution of their collaboration. Where Little Woods was about survival, Hedda is about self-immolation.

Thompson’s performance is a study in slow implosion. There's both a flickering control and velvet menace in her version of a woman so suffocated by propriety she might set the drapes on fire just to watch them burn. Her Hedda isn’t tragic in the usual sense. She knows exactly what she’s doing — and exactly how much of it is self-inflicted. Thompson plays her as both mastermind and martyr, a woman whose intellect curdles into boredom. You can see the precise moment she decides to stir chaos simply because she can. A smile becomes a threat; a compliment lands like a blade. Every word she utters feels dipped in perfume and poison.

It’s rare to see Thompson get to be this complex onscreen. Both DaCosta and Thompson give Hedda the freedom to be cunning, sensual, narcissistic, even cruel, without apology. And the result is intoxicating. This is Thompson at her most magnetic and her most dangerous. And there’s something deliciously subversive about that.

Before You Were Domesticated, You Were Like Fire.

DaCosta directs like a woman unafraid. Hedda is opulent yet claustrophobic, sensual yet suffocating. It's a world that gleams even as it corrodes. She stages the chaos like a thriller wearing couture. And the result is a film that feels both classic and contemporary, grounded in Ibsen’s tragedy but pulsing with modern nerve.

As a storyteller, DaCosta knows when to let restraint do the damage. The explosions here aren’t loud, they’re emotional. Desire curdles into power, love into possession, and beauty into something almost grotesque. It’s a controlled detonation, and she never loses her grip on it.

In another director’s hands, Hedda could’ve been polite. DaCosta makes it punk. As weapons go, Thompson’s eyes are far more lethal than those pistols of hers. Setting the story in one of Hollywood’s most restrictive eras lets DaCosta take a scalpel to 1950s decorum—excavating Hedda’s repressed desire, queering her defiance, and turning power itself into a sadistic kind of foreplay. It’s a bold reinterpretation of the source material—a little good chaos situating the audience directly in the path of destruction.

What fun.

5/5 ★: Marriage, manipulation, and the art of self-destruction—just girl things.